A 100-Year-Old Tradition of
Buying and Selling Out-of-Print Periodicals

This history
of our business is reprinted from Periodyssey's January 2008
catalog:

This catalog (coincidentally numbered 115) marks the 100th
anniversary of the founding of Back Number Wilkins (which we
absorbed in 1998) and the 15th anniversary of the founding of
Periodyssey. Needless to say, we are proud to be a part of a
100-year-old tradition of buying and selling out-of-print
periodicals that stretches all the way back to the final days of
TR's presidency. Fred Wilkins established Back Number Wilkins in
Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1908. Unlike his competitors, who
catered to the library market, Wilkins made a specialty of selling
to the public. Jim Fleming bought the business in 1946 and
continued that tradition. After Jim died in 1994, we purchased the
business from his widow, Alice.
I began Periodyssey in
the pre-internet days of 1993, envisioning it as an old-fashioned
antiquarian business built on quarterly catalogs of recently
purchased highpoints. It soon became clear that in order to acquire
the highpoints, I often had to purchase hundreds of other lesser
issues. Then I learned that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing,
because people had wants that I couldn't have possibly anticipated.
Who knew this person's great-grandfather was a regular contributor
to Scribner's Magazine in the 1890s? Who would have thought
that someone else was looking for the October 1905 issue of House
Beautiful because it featured the early 20th century home that
they were currently renovating?
Before 1994 was out, this
evening occupation turned into my full-time employment. Inevitably,
space became an issue. In 1995, we moved the business from
high-rent Washington, DC, to bucolic Northampton, Massachusetts. In
1996, we purchased the remnants of the venerable J. S. Canner Co.,
in 1998, the massive stock of Back Number Wilkins, and in 1999, the
select high-end stock of Leon Williams. By that time, we had
outgrown our Northampton digs and had moved into warehouse space in
Eastworks, in nearby Easthampton. By that time, as well, I had
enlisted my wife, Monica Green, as business manager and had hired
Kayt Thompson (then Ehrmann) as office manager. Though we have
moved once since then within Eastworks, and we have employed more
than a dozen good folk off and on over the last decade, the
configurations of the business have largely remained unchanged: I'm
in charge of buying and selling, Kayt skillfully mans the office and
computer communications, and Monica diligently monitors the books.
I have found my work of
the last fifteen years thrilling. Some of our most exciting
acquisitions and sales have included: complete or long runs of
The Dial, Harper's Weekly, Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper, the Southern Illustrated News, Puck,
the German Puck (the publisher's set), Judge (the
publisher's set), Ladies' Home Journal, Vogue,
Harper's Bazaar, Time, The New Yorker, and
countless lesser titles. We have handled the rarest Hawthorne, Poe,
Twain, Fitzgerald, and Salinger periodical appearances, among many
great writers. And we have sold magazines featuring the lovely
artwork of Will Bradley, Maxfield Parrish, Harrison Fisher, and
Norman Rockwell, to name only the most obvious. I feel honored to
be associated with such beautiful and fascinating artifacts of our
cultural past and all of us at Periodyssey look forward to the years
ahead. Thank you for your business.